


Noted

by veausy



Category: Stranger Things (TV 2016)
Genre: Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - High School, Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Alternate Universe - Normal High School, Coming of Age, F/M, Fluff and Angst, Freeform, Friendship, High School, Misunderstandings, Modern Era, Pining, Secret Admirer, Slice of Life, Unrequited
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-08-12
Updated: 2018-08-12
Packaged: 2019-06-26 03:33:33
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,643
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15654918
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/veausy/pseuds/veausy
Summary: Where El keeps getting anonymous love letters, and Mike, annoyingly, couldn't care less.





	Noted

The first one fell out of her locker when she stopped to grab her Bio book before fifth period. 

It was small, scruffily wrinkled, and had tears in the folds as if it had been opened and closed many times. _You are the coolest girl in this school,_ was written with an obviously unsharpened pencil across the middle line of the wide-ruled paper. She turned it over, but the back side was blank, no signature, no hearts. Shrugging, she left it on the top shelf as she swung the door closed and forgot about it for the next four hours. 

After school, Max always tagged along while El gathered what she needed for the night’s homework, so it only took four seconds of the door being open for the elder girl to shriek and pounce, grasping the fragile paper from where it greeted them on the shelf. Eyes roving over the uneven handwriting, Max looked nearly deranged, hair bouncing as she shifted on her feet excitedly. 

“You have a secret admirer? Oh, my God, you have a secret admirer. Oh, my God, who is it, who is it?” 

El rolled her eyes, zipping her backpack closed, and tossed one strap over her shoulder, fixing her sweater and checking her hair in the little star-shaped mirror Max had glued on the inside of the locker door the first week of school. “It’s not signed, how should I know?” 

“Oh, my God,” her friend repeated, excitement even more palpable. Her gaze slid up to study El as she folded the paper up, and then shifted over her shoulder to somewhere down the hall, where El assumed Max’s boyfriend was slowly making his way through the crowd of students walking out of the building en masse. “Come here, come here,” she called into the muffling cacophony of hundreds of teenagers, one hand waving in the air. 

When Lucas finally rounded the cluster of girls right behind El, he dropped a kiss on Max’s lips and one arm over her shoulders. “’Sup?” 

“Look,” Max giggled, unfolding the note again and displaying it for him, “El got a love letter.” 

El sighed, slamming the metal door of her locker closed and shifting the lock to dislodge the code. “It’s not a love letter, it’s barely even a letter. They probably got the wrong locker.” 

Max shook her head. “Nobody would be that stupid. They had their whole heart on the line, you think they wouldn’t check? Besides, it must be someone you know. I have no idea where anyone’s locker is, other than you five,” she said, referencing their tight-knit circle of friends, three of whom were probably already waiting for them by the main doors. 

El reached over and snatched the note out of Max’s hands, folding it carefully and storing it in the side pocket of her backpack, zipped closed. “Whatever. There’s nothing for me to do about it, until he tells me who he is or something.” 

Lucas, with his long arm still hanging off Max’s shoulders, swiveled the two of them to begin walking to the front of the building. “Hey,” he said, fingers carding through the long tresses of Max’s hair that lay near where his hand was hanging, “it could be a girl.” 

Max slapped his stomach weakly. “Did you see that handwriting? Ew. Definitely a guy.” 

El hummed. “Maybe someone put it in there as a joke.” 

“Put what in where?” came Dustin’s loud voice, earning them strange looks from the stray individuals passing through their vicinity. He had shot up several inches since ninth grade ended several months ago, but he was still not tall enough to stick out of the crowds of kids milling about the halls. El picked him out by his wild hair, frizzy and sticking in all directions proudly. 

“El got a love letter from a secret admirer,” Max said, voice half-bragging on her behalf as they approached Dustin, who was very attentively watching Will and Mike have a thumb war. 

“Wait,” Dustin uncrossed his arms and turned all of his attention on El. “Let me see it.” 

“No!” El said, taking a step backward as he made grabby hands at her. “I respect my admirer’s privacy.” At the back of her head, she still felt that niggling worry that the whole thing was a joke. She’d fallen victim to bullies many times before, a result of her generally unsuspicious and often gullible nature, but these friends of hers didn’t know about it. She didn’t want them to, either, but if this note was the start of some strategy of her humiliation, she’d rather be skeptical right away. 

Mike won the thumb war several seconds after they all huddled around to watch, his long arm pumping in the air joyously and his raspy voice letting out a dorky “huah!” into the now-emptier air of the school building. El watched his eyes morph from little crinkled crescents into the huge depths they usually were when he tuned in to the conversation Max was having with Dustin about the note. 

“I just don’t know why they wouldn’t even sign it. Like, then what’s the point?” 

Will opened the heavy double doors, leading them out into the sunshine. “Maybe they’re too shy.” 

Dustin shook his head. “Maybe they’re planning something more elaborate and this is, like, foreplay.” 

“Ew,” Mike wrinkled his nose, shoving Dustin’s shoulder. “Or maybe they just want her to know that she’s admired, no strings attached.” 

The group quieted as they considered that, and soon Dustin was recounting the explosion he caused in his Chemistry class, a story which lasted them all the way to Lucas’s car, the ride to Mike’s house, and the walk down to the basement. 

Nobody brought up the note again, but El’s chest stayed warm from Mike’s words. 

\-- 

When El first moved to Hawkins, she spent a few days friendless and mostly isolated while she adjusted to the new school. Mike was the first one to smile at her, talk to her, help her find a classroom when she got lost, and invite her to hang out with him – all in the first five minutes of knowing her. He became, then and there, her best friend. 

She and Hop moved around a lot during her childhood, starting with when he’d adopted her out of an abusive home and gave them both a new start in a small suburb in California, through several other cities of various sizes with struggling police departments that were lacking leadership. It tended to be that he’d land himself the job of Chief, get the place in order and back on its feet, running like a well-oiled machine, and then they were off to the next place that needed him, where El was the new kid again. 

Hawkins was the place they’d been the longest by almost two years, and now she was going on four years with this ragtag group of friends of hers. She and Will needed to split off from the loudness and the rambunctiousness of the others often, just to take deep breaths and regroup, and Mike was the kind of social chameleon who could be yelling along with the radio in a car going eighty on the interstate and then, almost at the drop of a hat, be sitting quietly and talking El down from a panic attack with a low, gentle voice. So, El and Will always let him tag along. 

The Wednesday after the first note showed up, she left the cafeteria early during her lunch period to get her anxiety medication from her locker, and Mike came with her, hands in his pockets as their nearly identical black Converse All Stars squeaked on the off-white linoleum of the empty hallways. The din of the cafeteria that currently housed half of the entire population of the school was slowly growing muted behind them, and Mike’s voice got softer with each step they took away from the racket. 

When she opened her locker, another note fell down, this time on printer paper, and she held it up to him, eyes wide. He looked back at her with a blank face. 

“You open it,” she said, shoving the note in his hands as she began to move her papers around to get to the little orange medicine bottle. Swallowing two pills with a swig of the water Mike held out to her, she surreptitiously checked her appearance in the mirror before closing her eyes and chiding herself internally. Stupid. _Yes, give him a note to read from some random guy who’s hitting on you and then make sure you look cute in hopes he’ll finally notice that you’re a girl. Stupid._  

Closing the door as quietly as she could to avoid the attention of the teachers lecturing in the neighboring classrooms, she finally turned to him, eyebrows raised. 

He was staring back at her, expression nearly identical to hers. “What, you want me to read it to you?” 

“Is it the same thing? It’s different paper.” She wanted him to see she had an admirer. She wanted him to get jealous. She wanted him to like her. 

He chuckled lightly and turned the paper this way and that, making a show of confirming her observation. “It’s another letter, El.”

“Okay,” she squeaked. “Is it nice?” 

He pursed his lips. “Of course it’s nice. Why wouldn’t it be nice?” 

El took the paper from him then, turning it around unseeingly and trying to focus on the words. Same handwriting as before, a messy scrawl with huge loops and no discernible tilt, like each letter wanted to go its own way and they were stumbling around one another drunkenly. 

_The prettiest one, too._

_-Your secret admirer  
_ _:)_

She turned it to Mike again, who had taken his phone out and was scrolling through Reddit. “Doesn’t that smiley face look sarcastic to you?” 

He blinked. His freckles were so striking, sprinkled generously over his nose and cheeks, with the darkest one landing just on the jut of his top lip, like it was beckoning for attention. “It’s just a smiley face, El.” 

“No,” she frowned, turning the paper toward herself again, before lifting it up to his face. “It’s fucking mocking me.” 

Mike laughed, the gentle sound of it echoing lightly in the locker-lined hallway, and he tipped his head back toward the cafeteria, waiting until she started walking before following, his long legs eating up the trek at half the speed it took hers to. “You’re reading into it.” 

“Why is it on another line, why not put it up next to the signature?” 

“El,” he said, smile in his voice even as his eyes were roving over the bright screen of his phone, “Just accept the compliment.” She hated how he was so disinterested. She felt like Cher in _Clueless_ , showing off for someone who wasn’t even aware she was doing it. 

As a last ditch attempt, right before he reached to open the cafeteria door for her, she asked, “Mike, am I really pretty?” 

He blinked at her, one eyebrow raised and getting lost in the fluffy bangs that hung into his eyes sexily. Anyone else might think he spent hours in front of the mirror styling his hair that way, but she knew his morning routine by now, and it was just supremely unfair that all he did to achieve this carelessly handsome look was swiping wet hands through it a couple of times and it stayed obedient for the entire day. With embarrassment, she remembered the five minutes she spent applying lip gloss before she met him in his neighboring driveway every morning, and the blush on her cheeks seemed to convince him she was asking out of genuine insecurity, rather than half-assed ploys for attention. “Come on, El. Of course you’re pretty.” 

She looked between his eyes, as he looked between hers, and it was a curious kind of quiet that blanketed them then. Six seconds in, the bell suddenly rang, making them both jump, and they scurried into the raucous room to grab their bags and haul themselves to class. 

\-- 

She was alone when she got the next note a week later, and she pocketed it quickly without opening it, running out the main doors to meet Mike where his bike was parked near the benches. He handed her the hot pink helmet he’d bought her when she started regularly hitching a ride with him back to the street they both lived on. It was still as good as new, not a scratch in sight, but so frequently used and so dear to her that she didn’t know what she’d do if it were ever to get stolen. 

Once she was seated on the back with her arms around his waist, Mike grabbed the handlebars and maneuvered them out of the school grounds. They rode in silence for the first few minutes, El’s legs peppered in goosebumps from the cool November breeze, and she almost regretted wearing shorts so late in the year, but Max kept telling her she had the best legs she’d ever seen, and El wanted Mike to hear her say it and, maybe, look at them himself. 

At a stop sign several blocks from home, El pointed to a food truck parked under a large oak tree on the other side of the street. “Look, it’s tacos.” 

Mike swerved to get to it so fast the bike almost tipped over, and El laughed into the cool air, hands tightening in his jacket. 

When they got their food, they sat on the grass to the other side of the sidewalk, El hoping the earth was dry enough that her jean shorts wouldn’t be stained afterward. They ate in companionable silence, watching cars drift through the relatively empty street, the two cooks in the food truck chatting inside the car almost inaudibly. The wind had stopped, as if to give El’s legs the respite they so craved, and when she rubbed at the goosebumps that had never quite gone away, Mike reached into his backpack and dug out a navy sweater she recognized as part of their school’s gym class uniform. He draped it over her legs. “It’s clean, I didn’t use it today.” 

El savored the sudden warmth on her bare skin, humming in satisfaction, and bit into the remainder of her taco with renewed vigor. Mike watched her with amused eyes, his own cheeks round as he chewed. 

He rolled their discarded wax paper wrappers into balls and tried to throw both into the garbage bin next to the truck, but El kept batting at his arms and yelling things to distract him, so one flew too wide and rolled off the sidewalk, under car, which made El giggle into her knees. The other, Mike didn’t quite throw while El interfered, keeping it in the lose circle of his hand until finally she fell over his lap and laughed into the grass, breathing hard from the exercise, and he launched it in a perfect arch, landing in the bin without a hitch. El stopped laughing. 

She let her breathing even out, soft gusts of it warming the skin of the top of her hand while the bottom was cool from the grass, and she stayed still long past the point when the jut of Mike’s knee into her ribcage turned painful. Wiggling a bit, she rolled halfway, her back nearly pressed against his stomach. “The grass is wet,” she told him, lifting her hand to show streaks of brownish-greenish dirt on her palms. “My ass must be wet, too.” 

Mike stayed quiet, and when she glanced at him over her shoulder, he was biting his bottom lip, eyes trained on something across the street. Feeling embarrassed, she clambered up, dusting her hands off and rising to her feet. “We should get going.” 

As El was tightening her helmet under chin, Mike finally broke the silence. “Any new notes?” 

“Oh!” El suddenly remembered that there was one in her bag, and she dug it out, holding it out to him. When he didn’t move to take it, she unfolded it herself, eyes swimming over the text. 

_You’re the smartest, kindest, and most interesting person I’ve ever met. I will love you forever._

_-Yours_

“Oh, my God,” she breathed, hand hovering over her mouth. 

“What,” Mike murmured, stepped closer to read over her shoulder. 

“Oh, my God,” she repeated. 

Mike put a hand on her arm. “El, what’s wrong?” 

“They _love_ me, Mike. Like, that’s too real now. What am I supposed to do, I feel so guilty!” 

He looked bewildered. “Why do you feel guilty?” 

She waved her hands in the air helplessly, the note billowing along with them. “They _love_ me! And I don’t even know them, that’s, like, so shitty. I thought it was just harmless flirting or some stupid prank, I don’t know what to do now!” 

“Okay,” he held his hands up in front of him, voice low and even like he usually used when she got panicky. “It’s okay. Listen, El, the guy’s not signing it or asking you any questions, he doesn’t want anything from you. Stop feeling guilty. It’s not your fault that someone has whatever feelings about you, and it’s not your job to deal with it.” 

“Then why are they saying this to me?!” 

He lifted the note from her grasp carefully, folding it and placing it back inside the backpack pocket where she collected the papers now. Then, he pulled her into a hug, her face landing on the soft material of his basketball team sweatshirt, which had his name in neat shiny letters on the back. Her cheek pressed up against his chest, right over his heart, she listened to herself breathe, wondering, with real interest for once since the whole ordeal started, who was sending her these notes. 

“It seems like they just want you to know,” Mike said simply, once he was satisfied that she wasn’t having an attack. After several minutes of silence, they climbed on the bike and went home. 

\-- 

By the following week, the entire group was throwing out theories about the identity of the admirer, entire lunch hours dedicated to ruling out people based on generally baseless factors, like Max’s argument that Ben from World History couldn’t be the admirer because his legs were too hairy. 

“Let me see them one more time,” Dustin said, making grabby hands again. “I’m like a genius with handwriting.” 

As El began to reach into her backpack, Mike set his sandwich down and wiped his hands on a napkin. “Don’t you guys think we should respect this guy’s privacy? He obviously doesn’t want to be identified.” He sounded bored, eyes cast down as he dug around in his wrinkled brown lunch bag. 

Lucas raised one pointer finger. “Again, what’s with the assumption that it’s a guy? First of all, Max, your handwriting is abysmal, so that argument sucks. Plus, we could be totally ignoring half the pool of suspects just because we’re all assuming it’s a dude.” 

Will said, “Whom do you generally hang out with besides us, El?” 

El opened her mouth, then closed it, shoulders slumping. “I … nobody much.” 

Dustin’s grabby hands were still hovering in front of him, eyes riveted to where El’s hand was halfway inside her backpack pocket. She still hadn’t made to take out the notes, stuck between what Mike had said and her desperation for answers. 

Mike looked up then. “I don’t see what’s all that interesting anyway. Anonymous love letters, really? Can he be more childish?” He glanced around at the others, looking for affirmation, but other than Will’s slightly tilted lips and Lucas’s shrug, nobody wanted to express such criticism. “Seriously, you guys don’t think it’s all a little … middle school?” 

El scowled, taking the three notes out of her bag and handing them to Dustin spitefully. Now that Mike wasn’t being completely uninterested, he was just being outright mean, and about someone who _loved_ her. She made eye contact with him as Dustin unfolded each of the letters, challenging him to speak. 

He looked away, gaze skittering to and from the notes before he finally sighed and continued to eat his sandwich. 

“Interesting,” Dustin murmured, more for show than for any conceivable reason, one finger on the dip in his chin as he leaned from one note to the other interminably. Max scooted over to steal two Doritos from the bag in El’s hand, smiling beatifically at her as she crunched them, and Mike snuck his hand in to steal two more, laughing when El swatted at him weakly. His hair was windswept from the morning bike ride, since he’d forgotten to bring his own helmet, and El had ended up riding nearly the whole twenty minutes with her hands on his head as protection by proxy, both of them laughing. Her fingers still tingled from the sensation of his silky hair between them. 

Just before the bell rang, Dustin folded up the letters again, dropping them into El’s waiting hands, but offered no theories. 

When Mike asked, “Well?” Dustin merely looked at him strangely before shrugging. 

“Beats me.” 

\-- 

The next note came the Friday before winter break, and the clamor in the hallway was deafening, the heat in the air from hundreds of coat-clad bodies swishing past one another a nearly palpable discomfort. 

In their search for the admirer, El’s friends had alerted nearly the whole school, and random acquaintances had begun suggesting potential suspects to her during breaks from class, clandestine whispers behind their hands like it was some big illegal undertaking. 

This time the paper was baby blue, one half of a regular sheet, but thick like the handouts some teachers made at the beginning of the year for their syllabuses. It was folded only once, in half, but the handwriting was the same crazy scrawl as always. 

 _I don’t have any ulterior motive. I think you’re special, and I hope someday you meet someone as special as you. Don’t search for me, I don’t want to be found._

_-With love_

Something about this note felt intimate, more loving by far than any of the others. She folded it up carefully and placed it in her bag pocket with the others, lips pursed. 

When she met up with the gang at the exit, she didn’t mention it, and for the entirety of winter break, she kept the note’s existence to herself. 

\-- 

On Christmas Day, after Hop opened the four large packages she’d left for him under the tree (the procurement of which was done with the heavy aid of Nancy Wheeler and Joyce Byers) and she opened the eleven ("Ha-ha," she had deadpanned) he’d left for her, Hop dropped a noisy kiss on her forehead before he reported to the station, because “crime doesn’t observe national holidays.” 

She texted Mike to come hang out, and he arrived on his bike a punctual four minutes later.

When she opened the door to let him in, her eyes landed on the light dusting of snow on the ground outside, making everything look a little matte, a crisp chill in the air. Mike was only wearing what she recognized as his pajamas, a lettuce-colored shirt and wide forest-green pants, feet stuffed into Nancy’s old Uggs. Her cheeks hurt from how hard she smiled at the sight. 

In his hands was a square box, wrapped neatly in pink wrapping paper with weird geometric shapes and lots of glitter on it. El grabbed it and ran to the living room, where the tree was still lit and two mugs of hot chocolate with marshmallows were waiting for them. As part of the exchange, she handed him the tiny black box she’d just received from Hopper, only slightly emptier. He held it with both hands, nearly reverently, and waited for her signal. 

She took a generous swig of her drink, set it back on its police badge design coaster, and met his eyes. “Go!” she shrieked, and tore into the wrapping paper. 

Under all the paper was a box, the material of it delicate and pretty, another shade of pink that warmed her chest. She lifted it up sweetly and batted her lashes, nodding at him. “Pink.” It was an acknowledgement of both the fact that everything he ever gave her was pink, because that was her favorite color, as well as their inside joke about how she was such a girly girl despite how generally gruff and unfeminine she was. 

He nodded back indulgently, his own hands still unmoved, holding the little box she gave him as he watched her open her gift. 

The inside of the box was lined with mauve taffeta, all wrapped in beautiful folds around the fancy chartreuse leather bag she’d pointed out at their outing to the mall several weeks ago. When she’d dragged him inside with her to glance at the price tag, they’d both groaned in pain before walking right back out of the boutique, and she looked up at him now in wonder. “How … how did you -?” 

He shrugged sheepishly, looking adorable because of the way his hands were still raised in front of him, and she dug into the box, raising the bag to appraise it. It was so beautiful. The price tag still hung on it, still as psychically excruciating to look at as it had been in the store. She grabbed it and stared at him. 

“Seriously, Mike, did you steal this for me?” 

“No,” he burst out laughing, head shaking. “I’ve been saving up.” 

“What, for _years_?” 

“El, come on. You like it, right?” 

She turned wide eyes back to the bag, hugging it to her chest tightly. “I love it.” 

He smiled. “Okay. I’m glad.” 

Still hugging the bag, cheek pressed against its top handle, El rocked side to side gently as she looked pointedly at Mike’s hands. “Your turn.” 

He lifted the lid off gently and stared inside, forehead wrinkled in confusion. “Are these car keys?” 

“Mhm.” 

He looked up, a crooked half-smile on his face. “Why are you giving me car keys?” 

El reached into her pants pocket, pulling out an identical beeper key and waving it. “Because we’re going to be sharing a car now.”

Mike blinked. 

She sighed. “Hop’s office all pitched in to buy him a newer cruiser, some sedan with more high-tech radio transmission. I got the truck. The truck has two sets of keys.” She wiggled her eyebrows, waiting for him to get it. 

He looked back at the little box in his hand and cleared his throat. “Does he know you’re giving me one?” 

El set her beloved new bag down, feeling like the mood got more serious without her noticing. Mike’s family had been dealing with some financial problems for several years, and although Ted and Karen had divorced, they still lived under one roof to preserve whatever income they had. It was a tough situation all-around, stifling emotionally because of the stilted relationship of his parents and embarrassing socially because he’d long been wanting to have the freedom of his own car. He’d had to get a lot of maintenance on his bike over the years from long-term use and the elements, and his frustration with the situation was well-known. In the winter, his commute was especially brutal. “Yeah, he trusts you. I mean, if you ever see it out in the driveway, you’re all clear to come use it, just text me to let me know. Is it okay?” 

When he looked up again, his eyes were a little wet, a little red rimmed. She scrambled forward, shimmying on her knees over the hardwood floor to where he was seated on the couch, wrapping her arms around him. 

He breathed out deeply, fingers wrapping around the key, and huffed mirthlessly. “This is so nice.” 

She leaned back a little, taking in the vulnerable curl of his mouth. “You deserve nice things.” 

He squeezed his eyes shut and dropped his face to her shoulder, shaking a little with silent sobs. They sat like that until the hot chocolate got cold and had to be microwaved, and for the rest of the day they huddled under the one large wool blanket El managed to lug from the upstairs closet and watched _Harry Potter_ reruns. 

\-- 

Max showed up at her locker before homeroom on the first Monday back to school, fingers rapping some rhythm on the neighboring metal door. “Did your admirer sneak you a present?” 

El snorted. “Through the slats?” 

“What if he gave you money, I dunno. Ooh, or a winning lottery ticket. Just imagine.” 

“You do that enough for the both of us.” 

Max popped her gum and blew another bubble. “So, you figure out who it is yet?” 

“No,” El said, barely looking up as she moved her homework from one folder to another and switched out her books for the morning. “I don’t know if there’s even a point in thinking about it.” 

“Oh?” Max leaned against the lockers and crossed her arms. “Got better prospects?” 

Max knew about El’s huge crush on Mike, and was thankfully loyal about it, never teasing or trying to bring it out into the open. Still, she liked torturing El with it whenever she had a chance. “Shut up.” 

“Look, the guy’s literally clueless. You could suck his dick and he’d still probably not understand – hey!” she shouted, dodging El’s fist as she swiped it to the left in Max’s direction. When it didn’t land, she continued sorting through her papers. “I’m just saying, you need to make a move or get a move on. I’m sick of this pining, it’s literally killing your love life. By Valentine’s Day, you’d better be sucking face with someone, I don’t care if it’s him or not. It has been decreed.” 

El snorted again, zipping her bag. “You just don’t understand, Max.” 

They started walking toward their classroom slowly, the clocks on the corners of the hallway indicating they still had plenty of time before the bell. “What don’t I understand? He’s a fish. Not even a spectacular one, he’s like … a salmon. Swimming upstream because he’s a stubborn asshole and thinks he knows best. There’s plenty of other salmon in the sea. El.” 

El’s face contorted into what she hoped was offended disbelief, glaring at Max. “He’s the first one who was ever nice to me here. He’s never gotten mad at me, we’ve never argued. He’s my best friend. He’s, like, so pure. I seriously don’t know how he’s like that, it’s so annoying, actually.” At Max’s raised eyebrow, she continued, “I just think we’d be awesome together. He’s clueless, but that doesn’t mean he’s not worth the wait.” 

Max shoved her into the classroom, sighing dramatically. “You’ll be waiting ‘till you’re gray.”

El pictured Mike with wrinkles and white hair, standing on a cute sunlit porch with his walking stick, his sweet smile unchanged. Her eyes must have glazed over, because Max shoved her again with a disgusted look on her face. El sat at her desk, glancing away with a grin when Max mocked her with her hands clasped at her chest and her eyes looking grossly infatuated. 

\-- 

There wasn’t another note for the first two weeks of classes, and El spent so much time with Mike she didn’t even mind. She had a feeling if another note showed up, Mike might be a little mean about it. 

One weekend, they were hanging out in his basement, El reading her Logic textbook while Mike planned something new for their upcoming DnD session, sitting on opposite sides of the table and eating out of the bowl of nachos Karen had brought down for lunch. 

“Hey,” she said, pausing her reading and dropping a finger on the word where she stopped. “Are you going to the Valentine’s Dance next week?” 

Mike stopped writing. “I haven’t thought about it.” 

“Well, then I guess if you do end up going, you’d go stag? Since most people got dates for it, like, the first week back?” 

“Oh,” Mike shrugged awkwardly. “Katie Gomez asked me, actually. I told her I wasn’t sure, though, so maybe she already asked someone else.”

El’s heart dropped. “Katie Gomez?” 

“She’s a junior in my AP Calc class. I, uh, don’t actually know her that well.” 

“Well,” El swallowed thickly, her hands feeling cold. “You should probably decide literally now and let her know.” 

Mike looked up at her and then away so quickly, she almost didn’t notice. When he picked up his unsharpened pencil again, he didn’t write, just let it hover over the paper as his eyes bored holes in it. “Yeah.” 

El glanced back at her book and tried to read for the next ten minutes, but her focus kept drifting and her chest started to ache. She finally realized she’d reread the same sentence hundreds of times and went to close the book, when Mike asked, “Are you? Going to go?” 

El blinked up at him. “I don’t know. None of the others are going, and I don’t really feel like showing up alone.” 

Mike paused. “Your, uh, secret admirer didn’t ask you?” 

El shifted. She wasn’t even ashamed of the answer, more just ashamed to be dateless when Mike clearly had upperclassmen jumping on him left and right. But he had made so clear to her at this point that he was not interested, that she only felt hollow when she said, “No.” 

There was something weird on Mike’s face then, an expression she couldn’t decipher. Before she could store it in her mind, he looked back down and scribbled something on the paper. “I’m sure he will.” 

El frowned, but didn’t follow up. By the time Holly came downstairs and begged Mike to let her use his iPod several minutes later, El was stretched out on the couch as far from Mike as she could get, and he sat hunched at the table, staring at his notes intently. 

\-- 

On February ninth, El was walking to her locker during lunch to take her forgotten medicine again when she spotted Mike walking in the opposite direction. 

He looked jumpy, wide shoulders raised to his ears and hair unkempt. “Oh,” he said abruptly when he saw her, and his body jerked, like he didn’t know where to go. Then, he scurried past her. Frowning for some moments after his retreating frame, she finally shook her head and started to turn her lock. At the opening of the door, two notes fluttered out, one folded neatly and the other haphazardly, lines of it crooked and not a right angle in sight. 

Carefully opening the neater one first, she read: 

_If you haven’t secured a date yet, I would be honored to go with you to the dance next week. Promise I'm not a fifty-year-old creep._

_-Admirer_

She then grappled with the other note, seeing that it was written on the same material as the first, but the handwriting looked messy, rushed, a little familiar. 

_I just realized you have no way of saying yes or no. Just circle one and drop this in one of the empty caddies by the teacher’s lounge._

_-Mike_

El froze. Head swiveling down the hallway to where he’d just disappeared, she nearly gave herself whiplash. When she looked back the paper, the words were unchanged. He must have realized his mistake after sticking the note in the slat. As she stared at it, she started to recognize his writing, the light smudges of the graphite where his skin drifted over the words because he was left-handed. 

Wonder bloomed in her chest, a deafening roar in her ears. Slamming her locker shut and forgetting about her meds altogether, she rushed after him, listening to the slap of her boots on the floor as it echoed against the walls. He wasn’t in the cafeteria, and he wasn’t at his own locker. 

Nearly sweaty now with the effort of rushing around to find him, she finally slammed open the door to the main stairs, halting in the doorway as she spotted him. 

He was sitting on the floor with his back against a wall, long lanky legs drawn up to his chest with his arms wrapped around them, his forehead resting on his knees. He looked so much smaller than she knew him to be, caved in on himself and hair sticking up in all directions. 

Approaching him slowly, El took her time folding the notes and sticking them in her back pocket. When she sat on the step near him, he didn’t acknowledge her. 

“Mike, come on.” 

He didn’t move, still as a statute, his knuckles white. El reached out hesitantly and set her hand down on his forearm, jumping when he jerked up. She took him in. His face was bright red, eyes swollen like he’d been rubbing at them, and he looked miserable. 

“You dumbass,” she said affectionately. He looked stricken, so she hurried to add, “My answer’s yes.” 

He blinked like he was staring into the sun, eyes squinted in a near imitation of actual pain, looking watery now. “You serious?” he croaked.

El sighed. “I wanted you to ask me three weeks ago.” When he just shook his head slightly, she pursed her lips. “Been waiting a lot longer than that.” 

His hand seemed to be moving of its own accord, not even registering his attention as it landed softly on top of hers, fingers curling around her own. “You – what?” 

“Shut up,” she said, shoving him with the hand trapped between his skin. “You called your own self childish, what the fuck kind of multiple personalities even –“ 

“I was trying to cover my ass –“ 

“And to listen to you fucking waxing poetic about _Katie Gomez_ at lunch all this week, you’re such an asshole –“ 

“No, I wanted to see if you –“ 

“Shut _up_ ,” she said again forcefully, moving closer and dragging him toward her by the arm she had in her grasp. He complied without a fight, eyes wide and lips parted. His freckles sang at her, the one dark one sparkling from his shiny top lip. The beautiful bow of it made her mad, and she grasped his chin, wiping a thumb roughly over his mouth, glaring intently. He made a muffled noise of protest but kept watching her motionlessly, eyes roving over her face. Once she could get her hand to stop shaking, she lifted her gaze to his. “Kiss me.” 

He moved slightly, as though willing instantly to obey, but stopped himself to make sure she meant it. She stared at his mouth angrily, watching as the corners of it lifted in amusement. 

Impatient, she slammed their mouths together herself, making a cut-off sound at the feeling of his soft, plush skin on hers. Pulling away, she grumbled, “Fucking pillows on your face, what the –“ 

He chuckled and pulled her in again. 

\-- 

“She said she was getting her pills from –“ 

Of course, three minutes later, the door slammed open and Max’s shrill shriek echoed through the staircase as she hopped joyfully in the doorframe. Lucas stood behind her, looking stunned. 

“I did it! I did it, holy shit, I did it, Lu!” 

Her boyfriend looked at her, bewildered, and settled his hands on her hips to calm her. She grabbed his face and pulled his cheeks. 

“It’s February ninth, she had five days left, _I spoke it into_ _existence,_ babe, oh, my God!”

As Mike hid his face in El’s shoulder and El flipped the bird at her friend behind her back, Lucas started laughing, brushing fingers lovingly through the hair around Max’s face before dragging the both of them out of the staircase and letting the door slam shut.

**Author's Note:**

> Hi, I've missed you all so much!


End file.
